Deuteronomy 1:21

See, the Lord your God has given you the land.  Go up and take possession of it as the Lord, the God of your fathers, told you.  Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. NIV

It’s been 40 years.  Moses is now, it appears to me, reciting the history of what had happened all those years ago, before the people of Israel began the 40 years of wandering in the desert.

Moses explains how they had reached the hill country of the Amorites, and how God told him and he told the people that this was the land that God had planned for them.  I saw something this morning that I had not previously seen in this story.  In verse 22 and 23, Moses says, “Then all of you came to me and said, ‘Let us send men ahead to spy out the land for us and to bring back a report about the route we are to take and the towns we will come to.’ The idea seemed good to me so I selected twelve of you, one from each tribe.” NIV

Of course, the spies go up and they come back and spread the rumors that I looked at earlier this week and, everyone gets terribly worried and doubts God and consequently, no-one gets to enter the promised land except the two spies who were faithful, and they only get to go after wandering for 40 years in the desert.

This lesson dovetails perfectly with what I was studying yesterday in The Purpose Driven Life.  Rick Warren uses Noah as an example of one who is perfectly obedient and consequently completely blessed by God.  He notes that God is looking for obedience from his children.  Noah, he writes, “obeyed God wholeheartedly.  That means doing whatever God asks without reservation or hesitation.  You don’t procrastinate and say, ‘I’ll pray about it.’  You do it without delay.  Every parent knows that delayed obedience is really disobedience.”

I don’t want to be Moses.  I don’t want to do things because an idea seems good to me.  I want to be Noah.  I want to be obedient to God.  To do that, I must seek Him and listen to Him and then DO what it is that I am called to do.